I spent four years as Forbes' Girl Friday, which to me meant doing a little bit of everything at once. As a member of the Forbes Entrepreneurs team, I looked at booming business and startup life with a female gaze. I worked on the PowerWomen Wealth and Celebrity 100 lists, keeping my ears pricked and pen poised for current event stories--from political sex scandals to celebrity gossip to international affairs. In 2012 I helped to put two South American women on the cover of FORBES Magazine: Modern Family star Sofia Vergara (the top-earning actress on U.S. television) and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who is transforming the BRIC nation into an entrepreneurial powerhouse. Prior to Forbes I was at the Philadelphia CityPaper, where I learned more than any girl ever needs to know about the city's seedier trades. I studied digital journalism at The University of The Arts.
I left Forbes in November, 2013, to pursue other interests on the West Coast.

Should Rich Kids Be Grounded From Social Networking?

This week, amid reports that $15.9 billion man Michael Dell had daughter Alexa Dell’s Twitter account deactivated over security distress, I’m grappling with my own concern: should the very privileged rich be barred from social networking for their own good?

Because the hashtag #RKOI (rich kids of instagram, for the uninitiated) is making me feel murderous.

Still, it’s easy to see why Dell (or his security team, who he’s rumored to pay $2.7 million annually for protection services) might have been less than thrilled about 17-year-old Alexa’s prolific use of Twitter.

The 17-year-old posted check-ins complete with GPS info, statuses detailing her family’s whereabouts (she posted an invitation to her high school graduation dinner complete with time, data and location according to Bloomberg Businessweek) and photos of her exploits on the family jet (“En route to Fiji” she recently tagged a photo of her brother Zach on Instagram, a photo that surfaced on the Tumblr blog “Rich Kids of Instagram” but has since been deleted).

McAfee online security expert Robert Siciliano says social media and high-profile individuals are a recipe for disaster—especially when it comes to teenagers. “Kids today don’t understand the repercussions of posting their whereabouts,” he says. But it wasn’t so long ago that another high-profile individual found herself a victim of a burglary that she could have stopped—if she could only have curbed her Twitter habit.

When Paris Hilton was burglarized a few years ago (by the now notorious “Bling Ring”), she was in the habit of posting status updates detailing her every move—when she went on a coffee run, partying for the night, and even when she bought new expensive handbags, Siciliano says. “Not surprisingly, people were keeping tabs on her through those posting and eventually broke into her house. They knew where she was, how long she’d be gone and, perhaps most importantly, exactly what they were looking to steal.”

But Alexa’s problem wasn’t so much her flashiness as her alerting the world to her (very wealthy) family’s every move. According to regulatory filings, her father, PC magnate Michael Dell spends more than $2.7 million on personal and home security for his family. His daughter’s Twitter habit could undo the work of his security team in real time.

“This is personal security 101,” Siciliano says. In the ranks of the 99% it’s common knowledge that leaving an outgoing message on your answering machine telling friends you’re away for the week is a personal safety risk because, as he points out, “It’s just as risky to let people know where you are as it is where you’re not going to be.” Similar wisdom leads us to ask a neighbor to grab our newspapers when they’re piling up on our doorstep. “Even telling your cab driver on the way to the airport that you’re going to Mexico for the week is a bad idea,” he says. “Because now you’ve got some guy who knows exactly where you live and how long you’ll be gone, which could spell bad news.”

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I had a conversation with a good friend who works for the world bank about 8 years ago about the global economy and I will never forget his response “The rich will get richer, the poor will die off and the middle class better learn how to speak Spanish. Think of how society was splitting in the 1900′s it will be just like that!” Turns out he was not far off.

Whether your rich or poor, tweeting your location and plans for the day puts you at risk of a burglary or more. If it’s OK with the community here, I would like to share an article that might be helpful to readers:

The threat of being kidnapped is all the more relevant in developing countries like Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina (and probably in Asia as well), where there’s already a group of professionals out there trying to get ransom money from the very rich.

It seems to me that in these early days of social media, security settings and privacy haven’t been taken that seriously, but this will change as problems (like rich kids putting pictures of their Rolexes and private jets on instagram) come up.

“The threat of being kidnapped is all the more relevant in developing countries like Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina (and probably in Asia as well), where there’s already a group of professionals out there trying to get ransom money from the very rich”

This is addressed in “Breaking Bad”- anyone who has wealth is unfit to be known by there children.

Wealth is optional- if you want kids, and want them to survive, you can’t have both.

Fortunately the wealthy are few and there children denied them even if not better off much fewer.

THose who find there siblings taken need only look to there parents for not placing them with a fitter family- one not obscenely paid. Those who want tobe happy and free need only contact a lawyer- who can help them escape here parents tyranny.

I have to admit. After playing around with Facebook a little I realized just what a security risk it was for my children. I mean there were my family photos of my wife, myself, my children, friends and family. At the time I was living in Central America where kidnapping and identity theft is a national past time. That was it ,I killed it, never to look back.

Then I realized I was only worried because it was not just close friends that had access it, but a tribe of people I hardly knew. Ones who cared about me about as much as I cared about them. Which was only slightly more than zero.

Why take risks of such great magnitude for what purpose ? Having more friends ? Because quantity never outperforms quality. Ask any NFL team. Wasting more time on shallow pursuits ? Because that never delivered success to anyone, anywhere.

There is a reason Facebook is tanking, people are suddenly realizing that the value delivered is small and perhaps even detrimental.

Forbes Editor(s) – I came here to read an interesting story, but left without reading anything. Why? I have have never seen a tier one news provider such as yourself s with so many Google and other ads. Clearly your revenue is down or you’re executing a very poor digital content [and advertising] strategy. Or of course both…